Kevin Wetmore, Fanbase Press Guest Contributor

Kevin Wetmore is an author and professor at Loyola Marymount University. His books include The Theology of Battlestar Galactica, Post-9/11 Horror in American Cinema, and The Empire Triumphant: Race, Religion, and Rebellion in the Star Wars Films. For more information about Kevin, check out his website, Something Wetmore This Way Comes, and to purchase his non-fiction and fiction books, see Amazon.

Hi gang! It’s been two years. Two whole years since HBO’s Westworld showed up to delight, confuse, and intrigue. So, the sophomore year started this past Sunday evening with a lengthy “Previously on…” recap of the first season, which is good, because there is a lot you need to remember from freshman year in order to make sophomore year work.

As Halloween is fast approaching, the Fanbase Press staff and contributors decided that there was no better way to celebrate this horrifically haunting holiday than by sharing our favorite scary stories! Be they movies, TV shows, video games, novels, or any other form of entertainment, members of the Fanbase Press crew will be sharing their “scariest” stories each day leading up to Halloween. We hope that you will enjoy this sneak peek into the terrors that frighten Fanbase Press!

Forget the Battle of the Bastards, the Battle of the Loot Train is my new favorite thing. In fact, let’s take this episode in reverse order, because the last twenty minutes was the second best fight scene in the series. (And damn, the best fight scene in the series was in the middle twenty minutes, but more on that!) This episode was not only in the top five of episodes EVER, topping the three that preceded it in the season, but contained so many beautiful moments. Let’s look at this episode, end to beginning.

The title of the episode is one of Daenerys’ designations. She is “stormborn,” so named as the night of her birth a terrible storm ravaged Dragonstone, the ancient home of the Targaryens, her current headquarters, and the biggest motherlode of dragonglass in Westeros.

A tangential note before we begin: This episode premiered the day George Romero passed away. Romero was a remarkable filmmaker and a kind human being who made movies in Pittsburgh, PA, away from Hollywood. In this episode of GoT, I could not help but think of his influence on our culture when we saw the Night King leading an army of the frozen dead towards the wall – if there had been no Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, then popular culture would be very different. Raise a glass to the man who gave us the modern zombie and so many other fascinating and enjoyable films.